Has anyone got a contact at CGW, PCG or any of the other mags? Maybe we can make this an 'issue', for the editorial page and get some negative press.

We have given them a break. We've given them our money, and now our time.

All attempts by companies to control content have simply been instigations for circumvention of the controlling systems. The only way to truly avoid loss of digitial rights is to make the product so easy to use, or so inexpensive, that the cost of reproduction is prohibitive.

The "trying something new" argument is more a measure of your ignorance, than it is our our intrangiance. The ignorance of your statement leads one eventually to allowing involuntary medical experiments on humans. In fact, you may only experiment if you do not break the existing 'contract'. Valve has broken it. They have stolen time by producing a poorly constituted product.

As for "they aren't retarded", again, you're myopic. All companies make these mistakes, and they all suffer from them. THey make us suffer because of their mistakes. This product is poorly written,poorly concieved and poorly executed.

I could write a UI spec in four hours that would show how to properly build this product, and a set of sequence diagrams and rough architectural models in no more than a day, that would show how to build it correctly. Possessing this knowledge allows me to accurately criticize the incompetence of what has currently been built.

At some point, the use of a thing (counter-strike 1.5) by a large number of people, has GREATER RIGHTS than those of the persons owning the intellectual property, as long as capital is not transferred. I submit that this is one of those circumstances. (this is too short, but I can defend this position)

Valve, in the pursuit of a means of controlling their intellectual property, has stolen time from the community, and decreased the value of an existing product by producing a poorly designed and architected application. Whether one argues that it is a form of consumer affront, or one of internal self-destruction, is immaterial. The point is, that thru incompetence, the largest online action game has been harmed, our time has been wasted, and most likely, a major gaming brand will have been harmed.



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Wow...Give em a break. Sep 14, 02:21 Hoowahman

Why is everyone so against this? How do you all know its not going to be the best thing thats happened to gaming? You dont. One of the major problems here is that someone is trying something new and everyone is getting pissed off. Obviously there is gonna be problems at first. Just sit back for a while and see what happens. I'm sure they knew the community was going to reject it at first. They aren't that retarded.
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"Unlisted Number, you should know that companys don't care about consumers, just the money in thier pockets."

That is not true. I care about my customers to the extent that in doing so, it allows me to profit from our exchange. Which is precisely the limit of the knowledge that I CAN possess about them that is rational and objective.

Unreal 2 was a disaster. Steam could make HL2 the same disaster.

Re:"If it does fail at least they did try something, they did have ideas, they did attempt to make it better."
This is what incompetent people say of others in order to justify their own incompetent actions. One is only justified in misguided experimentation if others are not liable for one's incompetent decisions.

As for your points, which are pretty pathetic refutations: Yes. It freezes. WHy it freezes is immaterial. If you're so good at making excuses for incompetence, perhaps valve has a public relations position for you.

Your argument simply implies that it's acceptable for you to waste your time. My time is valuable to me. I have invested part of two days trying to get steam to work. IT DOES NOT WORK. And since it doesn't work, it has wasted my time. Period. It has wasted my time because Valve did not competently execute it. And I don't care if it thrashes Counter-Strike. But I DO care if it means that a myopic, insensitve, company that places it's values and commercial experimentation over the value of the time and money of it's customers, essentially steals from me by the theft of my time. Even if it is my entertainment time. Because that time is short, and valuable to me. Valve does not respect me as a customer, nor does it value my money as a customer.

I have installed steam for the third time now, and it still hangs. The product is poorly executed. It is poorly written. It is poorly thought out. It does not consider the user. It does not keep the user informed. It concerns itself with the needs of steam and valve, before the needs of the user. What makes it worse, is that it's not that complicated a product. Your argument is specious and foolish. At some level it's both idiotic and immoral. (I use immoral in the economic, not traditional sense.)

Finally. I'm ex-MSFT, and I can complain all I want about the company because I have the knowledge and experience to do so. I possess the knowledge to understand why these errors happen in the software process. I have the experience of shipping a product, and of making decisions about products. Unlike others, I do not bash the company for intrinsic evil, nor do I bash gates who, I admire immensely. On the other hand, idiots in all companies including microsoft make product decisions that are bad for customers. (ie: Biztalk, CRM, Sharepoint) And they get away with it. Steam possesses that same idiocy. It is a form of incompetence. That form, whether you understand it or not, is a form of vanity, or self admiration, that allows a weak minded person to make bad business decisions because he pragmatically considers his ambitions before those of his customers, from whom he makes his money, and who exchange that money in anticipation of an experience. Valve, simply because of one prior success with HL, is not immune to such idiocy, as is evident by this product. Steam sucks. It's a bad product. It is a bad product because it is poorly executed. In itself, it is not a bad idea. But it IS a bad product.

If 50K people want to use the product, and each wastes 8 hours getting it to work, these people have been stolen from. Valve's brand, which is the second most valuable in the industry, will be irreparably harmed (as has been Unreal from Unreal 2's failure). A franchise we who have played the game, value, will have been harmed. And the most popular online game in production, counterstrike, and it's adherents will have been harmed. These things have multi-dimensional impacts. All these problems occur, because of incompetence. There is nothing special about Steam. The only special consideration, is the poor business decisions that allow such incompetence to happen.

This product is going to lead to ill-will. I certainly have it now. God I hate companies whose vanity and self interest takes precedence over the customer's interests. I guess that Gabe and crew DID learn how to act like Microsoft all those years they worked there.

Steam
1) it fails frequently and inconsistently. It seems to have magically partially-uninstalled itself for some reason. It required two complete installations in order to get one game of half-life up and running. Instead of taking an hour to install your game, now it can take overnight. I prefer to go to the store and buy it thank you. (I own hl,Blue shift, Opposing force and CS. All purchased at full retail.) The program is poorly written. It sucks.

2) the user interface doesn't keep you informed. ON my 3ghz 512mb system, it causes the initial OS load to hang for sometimes 30-40 seconds or more. If you start a game and it needs to download it, it doesn't tell you what it's doing, it just hogs your system while you wait there... wondering what the h*ll is going on. If you're in-game, and you get kicked from a sserver due to a slot reservation, it doesn't tell you why, AND it doesn't show the log or console so that you can TELL why. It's just a very poorly designed user interface, and the programmers didn't consider users when they built it. It sucks.

3) it pigs the system and rapidly reduces frame rates. I've lost 1/3 of my frame rates, and about 1/3 of overall system performance. The program is poorly written and arrogantly selfish. It sucks.

4) Several 'cheap' or perhaps 'idiotic' changes have been made to the games. For example, in counter-strike, you often lose all the user interface controls, and are thrown into spectate mode after your first death. This means that the experience of playing the game is boring as h*ll, because you can't choose your point of view, nor can you check the scores while you wait for the rest of your team to either win or die. You can't chat with other dead team-members. This kind of failure to think things thru is typical of companies who are self-centered, rather than those that focus on customers. It's frustrating. Steam sucks, Valve sucks, the programmers suck.

This kind of nonsense happens because of
a) failure to use outside, independent testing.
b) unbelieveable egosim, self-interest and vanity
c) a complete disregard for the customer

I hope someone hacks the system soon so that servers can reference a different authorization server, and so that the entire steam execution tree can be 'NOP-ed' out of existance.

Well, it's pissed enough that I'm going to spend the next ten years trying to NOT give Valve my money.

I am very, very disappointed with Unreal II. This game was heavily hyped, heavily anticipated, and took, from what we can gather, a significant investment, and in the end, it yielded a pitiful 'rail shooter' with no sense of exploration, of space, of character or of interest. It is, in fact, a mildly attractive shooting gallery.

Visually, it may have richer colors, but the lighting is overdone, feeling like 70's blacklight poster art, or for those of us who can remember, the lighting at a 70's hair-and-screaming progressive rock concert for a band who would be forgotten today.

These companies need to have a little less vanity about their engines, and make the games more interesting to play. Unreal is unrealistically disappointing.

i[I'm sitting here right now with a halogen desk lamp behind me. My shadow shows on the plastic case of the monitor, but not the screen. As others have pointed out, screens generate their own light and shadows don't show well against them]

You're confused. You imply that Doom III is not perfect, which is, of course, irrelevant and quite possibly unattainable except as a continuous pursuit of improvement. The fact of the matter is, that Doom III is best. Being best is all that matters until someone else does something better.

A couple of thoughts:
1) How can the house and senate enact a bill that will allow the FBI to chase down overseas 'activists' who do not have the usual hacker mentality about benevolent tresspass. The problem with this bill, is that they have a legitimate problem, but they lack enough information or knowledge to compose an appropriate legal solution. Instead of helping solve the problem, our entire community is attributing an evil intent to legislators who are being told of a problem that they barely understand, but they are incapable of solving it. And the current discussions of this forum have no chance of solving the problem of a 'bad bill' because they're attempting to address the issue of the legislator's intent, rather than the problem at hand: the need for the FBI to get search warrants on 'the bad guys'.
2)It is imperative that in our pleas to our legislators that we separate the act of hacking from the citizenship, intent, distribution and use of information. The former gets us what we want, and the latter gets the FBI what they want. ie: they need the abilty to investigate all hackers but not the abilty charge or prosecute them without other illegal connections. This distinction preserves our freedoms and gives the FBI the ability to investigate everyone, yet only chase down and prosecute the people with ill intent.
3) Any law should specifically state the legitimacy of hacking insecure networks as the only means of improving all network security.
I would normally work this argument out in more detail before posting, but time does not permit it.